Read "Dreads and Drolls" by Arthur Machen online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
In that highly picturesque, but quite un-Dickensian book, "A Tale of Two Cities," there is a curious chapter describing the reception at the house of Monseigneur--Monseigneur being a great nobleman, high in favour and power at Court. Dickens describes the company: "Military officers destitute of military knowledge; naval officers with no idea of a ship; civil officers without a notion of affairs; brazen ecclesiastics of the worst world worldly, with sensual eyes, loose tongues, and looser lives; all totally unfit for their several callings, all lying horribly in pretending to belong to them, but all nearly or remotely of the order of Monseigneur, and therefore foisted on all public employments from which any living was to be got; these were to be told off by the score and the score."
But there were still more remarkable people present at Monseigneur's reception.